Modern Games and Modern GPUs: The Grand Clash. Page 21

The Holiday season is approaching and a lot of people will be playing the latest games during their spare time. X-bit labs has decided to help you choosing a graphics card in the range from below $99 and up to $649 for the latest and most demanding games that are available today.

Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory

Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory is a yet another title from the well-known sequel. Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory uses Shader Model 3.0 for graphics cards that support it and Shader Model 2.0 for those that do not. Usage of long pixel shaders allowed game developers to create just slightly better image quality on the SM 3.0 hardware in a few cases of the game, hence, it we believe it is reasonable to compare the SM 2.0 graphics cards in terms of performance to the SM 3.0-supporting boards.

While Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory is a third-person shooter and for this type of titles high framerate is not compulsory, e.g., 35fps – 45fps may be sufficient speed, in the case of this particular game we believe that 60fps is adequate rate, as there are a lot of cases, for instance, when using a sniper rifle, where graphics performance and the lack of lags are crucially important.

High-End Graphics Cards

Only the highest-performing graphics cards today, such as ATI RADEON X1800 XT 512MB, NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX or the 7800 GTX 512, were able to render more or about 60 frames per second in Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory across all resolutions. Other graphics cards deliver enough speed at resolutions up to 1280x1024.

Obviously, anisotropic filtering and full-scene antialiasing decrease performance, as a result, only the strongest can keep up with the load.

In case you are fond of the Splinter Cell sequel, then the GeForce 7800 GTX 512 and the RADEON X1800 XT 512MB will be equally good for you.